Projects
Rural services
Access to rural services
This study focused on the major service deficits which rural communities face and suggests a new direction for policy to tackle the problem, aimed at bringing services closer to where people live, rather than expecting people to travel often long distances to reach the services they need.
The central message of the resulting pamphlet is that ‘poverty is everywhere’ and that people who are disadvantaged in the more affluent countryside are cut off from the services that even poorer people in towns and cities can turn to. For example we show that, despite the well known problem of isolated young people and pensioners in rural communities, local authority provision for these groups, in the shape of sports and leisure facilities and social services support to live at home, is well below average in the majority of the most rural areas in England.
View/download the full report.
Joint provision of services
We subsequently undertook a study for the Countryside Agency, focusing on the costs of the ‘joint provision’ of services, where ‘joint provision’ means simply, two or more agencies or organisations delivering services from a single building or vehicle. Such provision is an immediately appealing way to deliver services in small rural communities, and was rightly encouraged in the Government’s rural White Paper. But despite being talked about for many years, it is not as common as might be expected.
The objective of the project was to identify the financial conditions that are needed for different models of joint provision to work – with the aim of encouraging practitioners to develop new joint provision while ensuring that the reasons for past failures are well understood.